how I run my $600K brand with FIVE KIDS
As you may know, I run a six-figure brand online.
And… I have 5 kids – who I homeschool!
My “mom friends” often ask me how in the world I have time to run an entire business when parenting itself feels like such a full-time job. And totally get where they’re coming from, because I often feel that way myself!
But here’s something I’ve noticed: work tends to “expand” to fill all your available time.
In other words… if you have a few responsibilities, they can occupy your entire day, just as much as a larger number can.
So, if you have kids, you might feel like 95% of your time is spent parenting and there’s no way you could squeeze in running a whole business… but when you have more on your plate you just work a little faster and figure out what the essentials for each “area of responsibility” really are.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with Lisa Bass of Farmhouse on Boone a few months ago about this concept of work expanding to fill all your available time –
Lisa shared with me that thought her days were FULL with running her business and household (she has 8 kids, homeschools, and they grow most of their own food!)… and then they got a dairy cow! 🐄 Somehow, milking the cow (and making cheese, yogurt, ice cream, etc.) all somehow squeezed into their already “full” schedule!
This really makes me think that we’re capable of WAY more than we give ourselves credit for!
So, in short, the main thing that makes it possible for me to run a business as a mom of 5 isn’t anything specific that I do at all – it’s just that it actually isn’t as hard as it looks.
Beyond that, though, there are several tactics I use that make this whole crazy life of mine just a little more sane and functional, which I’ll get into now.
1. Essentialism
Essentialism has to do with pairing things down to the parts that truly matter. This really starts with knowing your goals, because only then can you figure out which parts of the process are, in fact, essential.
Take homeschooling, for example. My goal isn’t to replicate public school at home; rather, it’s to teach my children skills (reading, writing, and arithmetic) that they can take and apply to whatever passions they choose to pursue.
And let me just say this: teaching those skills – even mastering them – takes far less than the 6 hours/day we’d need to spend on “school” if we were trying to replicate public school at home!
Big picture, my main goal in life is to raise my kids well. Strategically, that looks like:
Spending plenty of quality time with them.
Teaching them important lessons, ideas, and skills.
Supporting them financially.
Feeding them healthy food.
Giving them opportunities to exercise.
To these ends, I spend my time primarily homeschooling (about 2 hours/day), cooking healthy meals (also about 2 hours/day), and running my business (about 4 hours/day).
Essentialism doesn’t stop with knowing your big-picture priorities, though. As I mentioned above, the reason I’m able to homeschool my kids in just two hours/day is because I’m clear on my educational goals, so I’m able to pare our school down to only the essentials.
Well, I apply the same strategy to running my business and even to preparing meals.
When it comes to my business, this looks like:
Focusing on optimizing for the only three metrics I really care about:
Customer success
Number of customers served
Profit
Choosing to ignore vanity metrics, like follower counts or likes.
Keeping my business strategy as simple as possible.
Keeping my team small and agile.
2. The Naptime Empire
One of God’s gifts to moms is that the younger a child is, the more sleep they need. In fact, there’s an inverse relationship between the amount of care a child needs and how many hours of care a child needs every day.
Source: https://www.kidshealth.org
In other words, younger kids need a lot more help with everything, but they also sleep a lot more than their older counterparts.
This is good news for every entrepreneurial mamma! Because while your kids need 10 - 14 hours per night, most of us adults only need around 8… meaning many of us have 2-6 free hours every day to devote to whatever we choose.
Now, of course, there are exceptions to this – some adults might need 9-10 hours/night and some kids only sleep 8. But, on average, kids sleep quite a bit more than adults.
And this has definitely been one of my “secret weapons” for building my business while still having plenty of time for my kids – I typically wake up 1-2 hours before them and get almost half my work done before they’re even up and/or work while the baby naps.
Now, I’m NOT saying that you should be able to get all your work done while your kids sleep – I certainly don’t! And, I’m also not saying that you should sacrifice your sleep to work all night. But an extra couple of child-free hours every day are definitely helpful. :)
3. Divide and Conquer
One approach that really didn’t work well for me was to try to run my business while parenting. Wanting to spend as much time with my kids as possible, I’d pull out my laptop in the living room and try to check off a few tasks. Or I’d set the kids up with an activity while I worked through my inbox.
While it sounded good in theory, working with my kids around didn’t work for me because I felt too distracted to do either thing well. I wasn’t able to really be “present” with my kids, able to enjoy them or give them the attention they deserve, nor was I able to give my work the thought it demanded.
Ultimately, trying to “work at home” made my work take so long that I felt like I was working all the time… not fun.
So, these days, we keep family and work separately, at least for the most part. I have a dedicated home office and dedicated work hours – which not only makes sure I have the space and time to work on my business effectively, it also means that when I’m not working, I can be fully present with my family.
Now, back when I was first starting out, before my business started making much money, it was tough to find space OR time. My first “home office” was just a table I placed in a corner of my bedroom… and naptime was my prime worktime.
If you can relate, here’s the good news: “He who is faithful in what is least will also be faithful in what is much.”
In other words, if you dedicate your time and energy to your business even when it’s “nothing” then you’ll find that it soon turns into something.
And, truly, the more successful your business grows, the more resources you’ll have at your deposal to make running it easier and more enjoyable.
4. Getting Help
And that leads me right into my next point! We all know how powerful it can be to get help; delegating tasks in your business enables you to do more and can free up your valuable time to focus on important projects.
Especially as a mom, this is vital to my well-being and success. I get a little bit of help with childcare and housework and a lot of help running my business. I definitely couldn’t accomplish nearly as much if I had to do it all on my own.
But it can be tough to figure out how to get this ball rolling. If your business isn’t yet very profitable then how can you afford to get the help you need to be able to grow it?
Well, first of all, it’s important to avoid the mindset of believing you need to get help to be able to start making money. Business doesn’t have to be complicated, you don’t need to be posting content on All The Platforms, and most entrepreneurs (including yours truly) didn’t have any help until after we finally got profitable.
But, with the right strategy, you don’t need to wait long at all. See, here’s the thing: getting help doesn’t have to cost you money. Done strategically, getting help is an investment with a positive ROI.
Here’s an example: Every two weeks, I pay someone to deep-clean my house.
Now, a lot of people might look at that and think that I’m privileged to have the luxury of getting someone else to clean my house for me.
Wow, Gillian really has it made… now she just gets to relax while someone else does her chores.
But, here’s the thing… I’m not “just relaxing” – I’m working.
I’m in my office, managing my business, because that’s what I know how to do best and how I want to offer value to the world. Meanwhile, my housecleaner is vacuuming my living room because that’s the skill she has and how she chooses to bring value to the world.
In short, as long as you learn a skill and exercise that skill to help others, you can then trade work with other people and we can all help each other.
Don’t take bank holidays
As a business owner, it’s easy to fall into cultural norms like working 40 hours/week. But, when you’re the boss, YOU get to make the rules – and that can make it much more compatible with parenthood than most careers would be!
One corporate pattern a lot of entrepreneurs follow is automatically taking bank holidays (like Columbus Day, Labor Day, etc.) off of work.
Personally, I choose to work on those holidays so that I can easily afford to take off time that’s a lot more meaningful instead, such as my kids' birthdays, days for trips to the beach or the zoo, or even just a cozy family day.
Being intentional about when I choose to take time off gives my family a lot more flexibility and makes sure that I can be there for all my kids’ important milestones, even as the CEO of a digital brand.
Build Passive Income Systems
If I had to work for every individual dollar that I earn, then there would always be a trade-off between either a) more time with my kids, or b) more money in the bank.
But I’m way more of a “have my cake and eat it too” type of woman. I believe there is almost always a third option that lets you have the best of both worlds without compromising one value for another.
A lot of what I’ve addressed in the previous five points has been about scheduling and getting help – essentially how I make time to work on my business.
And that explains how I’m able to “run a business” with five kids… but doesn’t really speak to how I’m able to run a $600,000 brand with five kids.
That 👆 comes down to one main thing: $100K Funnels. These are automated systems that sell my products for me, generating passive income for my brand day in and day out – even if I only spend a few hours in my office each week.
Each of these $100K Funnels takes 3-6 months to build… but once it’s set up, you can sit back and just let it do its thing, consistently bringing in thousands of dollars every month for years.
Since this is the one business strategy that’s had the very biggest impact on my business’s revenue, I wanted to find a way to teach you all its ins and outs, so I’ve recorded a 10-episode podcast series called The $100K Method to do just that!
Watch next: Or, if you want the tl;dr version, watch “the $100K method” video:
